In his first official dev blog, Chris Lena – Defiance‘s new executive producer – has outlined some of what’s coming to the action MMO over the coming months.

First, and probably of most interest, is the Castithan Charge Pack. This first piece of proper DLC for Defiance will add in the Castithan as a playable race, Charge Blades, Arena game modes, and a new Story mission line, amongst other things. Lena declined to give a specific release date, but did say that it would be coming sometime in August, and that we’d hear more specifics about the DLC around the time the release date is announced. He also reiterated that the team plan to get out five DLC packs by the game’s first birthday.

Lena also spent a bit of time discussing the bugs currently in Defiance, as well as the fixes and improvements that are coming. Some of it’s console-specific, but I’ll do my best to keep this précis relevant to PC.

Let’s see: the patcher will be getting further improvements. The voice chat and chat window are being improved. Clans are being fixed. The issue with groups entering a co-op map and yet not winding up together has been fixed in test and will be pushed live soon. Aaaaand there are lots of other fixes coming, apparently, but no specifics for those.

And yes, in case you skipped the first sentence of this article, Defiance has a new executive producer. Much as Lena is new to this role, he’s not new to the game or the company – he’s been with Trion for three years, and has been working on Defiance since November 2o12. Will the game shape up under his watchful eye and become something Paul will like a bit more? Time will tell.